Dying woman's confession leads to new court hearing for man convicted of 2001 Roxbury crack-house murder

A man convicted of a 2001 murder in a Dorchester crack house will get to make the case why a woman's statement that casts doubt on the testimony of the only witness against him should be enough for a new trial, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled today.

In 2005, a Suffolk Superior Court jury convicted Kenji Drayton of first-degree murder for the shooting death of Michael Greene, based in part on the testimony of James Jackson, who claimed he watched Drayton shoot Greene in a Columbia Road apartment that was used for selling and using drugs.

Some 18 months later, Debra Bell filed an affidavit claiming Jackson could not possibly have seen Drayton shoot Greene because he was busy doing drugs and having sex with her in a bathroom with the door closed while Greene was being shot.

Bell said she had lied in her initial interview with police and was coming clean because she had terminal cancer and "did not want her failure to disclose what she knew about the shooting on her conscience." Drayton filed for a new trial, but Bell died a week after that.

A lower-court judge ruled her death made Bell's affidavit hearsay - she could no longer be cross examined - and so not admissible in court.

The state's highest court noted that up until now, the only exception to the ban on hearsay was for deathbed confessions about whatever it was that had caused the confessing person's death - something that obviously did not apply in this case, since Bell's death had nothing to do with the murder.

But in its ruling today, the court carved out a new exemption to the state's existing hearsay rules to let Drayton at least make his case in a formal "evidentiary" hearing, at which he could attempt to prove the affidavit is "trustworthy" enough as evidence based on corroboration by other evidence or testimony from his trial.

Because Debra's affidavit is critical to the defense, its admissibility hinges on whether the defendant establishes that it bears persuasive assurances of trustworthiness. Although therecord as it stands does not permit us to answer that question, the evidence submitted by the defendant establishes that there is a substantial issue whether the affidavit has sufficient assurances of trustworthiness.